re: Bush slow to go to New Orleans---Obama slow to go to the border

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VB, you wouldn't have to be a lady would you? If not... (NTTAWWT)

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Yes, the entire National Guard was alerted on either Thursday or Friday (but, it was the normal thing we used to get for any major hurricane) - but on Saturday, it was "all hands on deck" to borrow naval parlance - every National Guardsman available was called to report to his/her unit.

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Some were, some weren't. LAARNG and LDWF helicopters, certainly, but there were USCG helicopters operating as early as Monday, August 29th. There were federal assets embedded with us from the beginning, including the FEMA people - and they take a lot of flak - their only real function in the planning - at least from the New Orleans perspective, was food and water.

They had a bigger coordination piece, but that didn't impact what happened in 504.

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1. Within four days of Katrina’s landfall on Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, then-President George W. Bush signed a $10.4 billion aid package and ordered 7,200 National Guard troops to the region. A few days later, he requested — and Congress approved — an additional $51.8 billion in aid.

2. Hundreds of firefighters from other cities who volunteered to help in the response were rerouted to Atlanta, where they sat through two days of presentations on sexual harassment and the history of FEMA before being sent to New Orleans.

3. FEMA Director Michael Brown, who resigned over his handling of the response, later told a group of students that the White House only wanted to federalize the response in Louisiana, where the governor was a Democrat, and not in Republican-led Mississippi in order to embarrass Louisiana officials. Brown said the White House believed they had a chance to “rub [Kathleen Blanco’s] nose in it.” The Bush administration denied political considerations played a role in the response.

4. The federal government didn’t waive the Stafford Act, which requires localities to contribute 10 percent of the cost of reconstruction and clean-up projects, until May. It was quickly waived after both Sept. 11 and Hurricane Andrew.

5. An investigation by Congressional Republicans, while placing most of the blame on the Bush administration, singled out New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin for not ordering an evacuation of the city until less than 24 hours before Katrina’s landfall. Nearby Plaquemines Parish had ordered an evacuation a day earlier.

6. Then-New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered 200 members of his state’s national guard to help Louisiana the day the Katrina hit, but a letter from Washington authorizing the move didn’t arrive until five days later.

7. On Tuesday, Aug. 30, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff flew to Atlanta for a briefing on the avian flu, and President George W. Bush later said he thought New Orleans had dodged a bullet. In fact, the White House had been informed the night before that levees in New Orleans had broken and the city was flooding.

8. Vice President Dick Cheney’s office called a Mississippi electricity cooperative and ordered repair crews to restore power to a pipeline sending oil and gas to the northeast, delaying the restoration of power to two rural hospitals.

9. Before the storm hit, Amtrak ran equipment out of the city. With rooms for several hundred evacuees, they offered the spots to the city. Officials declined, so the train left with no passengers.

10. Five days after the storm hit, then-Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) was allowed through the military checkpoints and given a national guard escort in order to visit his house. Jefferson said he was on tour of his flooded district and trying to examine the damage.


Read more: LINK

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